Who I am
by Midoriko-sama
Summary: The existential question of 'who am i' is asked by all. More so by those who don't know the answer.


Who I am 

By Midoriko-sama

July 28, 2003

Who am I?

Ever since I was old enough to think I have asked myself this question.

It started off when I looked at my mother and I looked at the mirror. The white hair, the eyes, those ears. They weren't like hers. Nothing like hers.

The others around me that were like her used to laugh at me and make her weep. So one day I clawed one of the guards through. I was terrified.

None of the ones like mother could do that, I knew it. That was why they needed the swards and the spears. Mother was even more frightened than I was, and then I could see that after that she was frightened of me too.

I learned they were called humans, and that I was not a 'monster' but that they insulted me by calling me that. My mother never told me who I was. She only told me I was a boy. But still, none of the boys ever looked like I did, or saw in the night. Or jumped up into the trees, or carve wood into toys with their fingers.

Then those 'humans' burned the house mother and I lived in. It was a large house, and many humans lived there, but the other humans burned it. They were the 'villagers', and they were many, and they were crying 'monster', so I knew it was me they wanted to get.

Mother had once told me that my father was a youkai. A demon, a powerful man of another race. So I thought, I will find them, they must be my kind, they have to be who I belong with. When I found them, I would avenge my mother, I would take all the 'villagers' and burn them down, like they had to my poor mother, alone in a room while she threw me out of the window.

So I went around, and wherever I found a 'villager', I burned him, or I clawed him, it didn't matter. He went down. They were all male too. The ones who had burned my mother. So all the male villagers died.

But then I met a 'youkai'.

He was tall, and powerful, and he couldn't kill me only because I was fast to escape.

I couldn't understand then. Humans had killed my mother. But she was human. And all the youkai I began to meet wanted to kill me too. But my father had been a youkai.

I had nearly come to believe that mother had lied, had not told me the truth about my father. I was growing taller, I could see. I had an outfit made out of the same youkai always as I grew, of fire rat, because mother had had it done for me and it helped me remember. That is was a useful ally in a battle I only understood while I grew.

Who am I? I was tormented by it. I was not youkai, I was not human, so what was I? Both? Neither? But if I was neither as they both asserted, then WHAT was I?

So I stole and I killed and I destroyed to try any make do with the nothingness.

I met my brother once too. He nearly took my life between he claws, but then just burned me up and threw me in a lake. That had been the last straw, I was nothing but a brat, and my own brother, who professed himself to be so, who had hair like mine and eyes like mine as I had _never_ met another creature, even other youkai, tried to kill me too.

Pillaging villagers remained what made me the most fierce. As I grow, so did my despair of finding who I was, what I was, and the memory of the flames eating my mother because of this ate away at me.

Of course then I met her. This jewel, I heard about this jewel that could finally make me one of the both worlds, could make me like my brother so that he, with his eyes and hair like mine, wouldn't have to kill me. And I would be among my kind. And I could kill all those that had tried to kill me as a child, all those who had thrown stones at me on my human night when in the beginnings I innocently told them what I was.

I was nearly innocent still when I met her. Although I wanted to kill and pillage, I was still a child. I see it now.

But when she pinned me to that tree the first time and didn't kill me, some of that emptiness filled up. She looked at me with an expression that held neither hatred nor fear, and told me not to return. That alone made me go to her again.

Again, again and again. And each time she had the power to kill me and wouldn't. and then she began _talking_ to me. No other had since my mother. And I began to notice how many things she had in common with my mother. How their hair was long a sleek and black, how they both held the same expression of well borne sorrow. I began to see my mother in that girl, and I began to see mother's village in her village. And that these villagers began to get accustomed to me in the long months I spent with Kikyou. How they didn't throw stones at me, and didn't throw fire at her for standing by me

She offered me humanity.

It didn't really matter to me either way. This girl was like my mother, and so had features like I did on my human night. My brother had features like I did as a youkai. With the jewel I could join one world or the other, but it didn't really matter. I just wanted to know who I was- human or youkai. Either one would have been ideal.

It all had to collapse. It was too perfect. When it did, I took the jewel from that 'human', that 'villager' who had fooled me, and I proceeded to raid and kill _her_ village as she and her like had done to my mother's.

Then I wake up to find that she hadn't done what I thought, that she hadn't wanted me dead like the others- but that she does now, so it doesn't matter.

I woke to find that I still didn't know who I was after all. I was still a half of both. I was not youkai, I was not human, I only knew what I was not. Hearing that hag in that hut blatantly say it was worst than the fact itself. She couldn't talk. She had always know who she was, human, villager, female.

But tonight, I understood something.

Tonight when the villagers had come with torches to burn the hag and her huge hanyou son, it all came back with a fury. The voices, the cries, the anger, the scent of sweat and fear, the roar of the torches. It was like seeing my mother die over in front of my eyes.

Only that now it wasn't my mother who was going to die, but _her_, because she was there with them. Because it's not my mother I see in her. Because she was in front of them trying to make the 'villagers' reason, and they spitting at her because she had been seen with me. And she was defending me, swearing for me, pledging that I would never hurt her or any of them. If she knew what I had done, she would hate me.

She would have hated me if the blood sucking youkai hadn't stopped them. When I placed myself in front of her, and the 'villagers' came at us with the fire, I was ready to kill each and every one of them to keep the flames away from her. And even the hanyou behind me, somehow.

But it's now as we go back that I realize. She nearly made me run from her when she asked if what had happened to the hag and her huge son had ever happened to me. And I told her that it had. That I had always been alone.

When she told me I had her . . . my mind sighed and let go, my world exploded in colour, and all I had was gone. I relaxed my spirit for the first time truly since my mother had burned before my eyes.

Human. Youkai. To be with my brother, I had to be youkai. To be with Kikyou, I had to be human. To be with Kagome, I just had to be.

That had been what drove me to ask myself when I had started, and _how_ I had ever started to see this strange girl with her skimpy clothes as my home. My return, my reference.

Who am I? I still don't really know. I'm still not human. I'm still not youkai. But she says I am both, not neither. And she's my home.

Who am I? It doesn't matter to Kagome. So I guess it doesn't matter any more.

Who am I? 

Who I am

End

I might have mixed the time lines a little. It's been a long while since I read the first episodes.


End file.
